Are these infamous fish man-eaters
or victims of hype? Writer Robert
Kiener travels to the Amazon
rainforest to find out for himself

Swimming

Piranh as
with

| 05đ2014
[[1L]]

A

READER’S DIGEST

S OUR NARROW 14-foot-long fishing boat
bobs quietly on a remote lake deep in the
Amazon rainforest, my guide Enrique
Sanchez gives me a hands-on lesson in how
to catch one of the world’s most feared
fish—the notorious red-bellied piranha and
its larger relative, the black piranha.
Known in some quarters as “man-eaters,”
these freshwater carnivores are thought
to hunt in packs and devour their prey bite-by-bite, ripping off flesh
with their razor sharp teeth.
It’s midday and 90-plus degrees Fahrenheit. The equatorial sun is
beating down on us as I listen to the 59-year-old veteran guide. A
pair of rainbow-hued parrots flies noisily above us, and the
rainforest’s palm trees are alive with boisterous black spider
monkeys. Nearby a long-limbed, white-necked heron stands guard.

| 05đ2014
[[1L]]

piranha and hauls it into the boat. So
does our boat driver Renato, a local ribeirinho (river dweller), who’s also an
expert fisherman. Soon, we’re getting
a bite almost every time we drop our
lines in and are catching one piranha
after another in the aptly named Piranha Lake.
Our raw beef bait is like a magnet
to the fish, which have such highly refined sensory systems they can detect
blood from hundreds of feet away. I
imagine a shark-like feeding frenzy
going on just below the lake’s placid
surface.
And those teeth! Holding a 10-inch,
three-pounder in his right hand, Enrique shows me the business end of
this much-feared predator. Its razor-

“Before you cast your line into the
water you need to slap the surface like
this,” says Enrique as he noisily beats
the water with the tip of his bamboo
pole. The heron flies off. “This gets the
piranhas’s attention. They think it’s an
animal in distress; an easy target.”
Mimicking Enrique, I slap the water with my four-foot bamboo pole
and then drop my raw-beef-baited
line and hook into the water. Almost
immediately I feel a bite. “Got one!”
I shout excitedly as I quickly yank the
pole straight up, as Enrique has taught
me. But all I have for my efforts is an
empty hook; the half-inch square
piece of bloody beef is gone.
As I re-bait my hook, Enrique
quickly hooks a plump red-bellied

sharp, quarter-inch-long, interlocking
teeth look like a small bear trap. As he
thrusts the piranha closer to my face,
he says, “Just look at those teeth!”

and there with small wooden homes
where residents scratched out a living
farming for bananas, fruits and fish.
We shared it with the occasional slowmoving ox-cart and peasant farmers
TO REACH this remote lake, I on bicycles.
boarded a flight to Manaus, capital
By the time we reached the end
of the state of Amazonas in northern of the bone-jarring drive at a simple
Brazil and known as
wooden shack built
the “entryway to the
on stilts along the MaAmazon,” I hired Enmori River, even the
The guide
rique to take me fishsmall farms had dising for piranha. It took
appeared. “Welcome
thrusts the
us almost a day of rugto the Amazon rainthree-pound
ged travel to arrive at
forest,” said Enrique.
piranha
Piranha Lake, some 70
We boarded a 14closer to my
miles south.
foot long, metal outface and
A motorized water
board boat and were
says,“Just
taxi took us across the
soon zipping along
mighty, muddy Amathe coffee-colored
look at those
zon River to the busMamori.
teeth!”
tling, ramshackle port
B o at i ng t h rou g h
settlement Careiro da
what is essentially a
Varzea. The simple
flooded forest was
wooden shops and houses were all like traveling back through time. The
built on stilts. Some on the river’s edge shore was dense with towering trees;
were built to float. Enrique explained, some of the more than 16,000 species
“The Amazon rises and falls about 40 that give this remote part of the globe
feet during the year. During the rainy its name, the “Lungs of the World.”
season the river will flood this land as After an hour on the river, we arrived
well as much of the rainforest. ”
at the Amazon Turtle Lodge, one of
We traveled in a Volkswagen bus the best places to see the piranha up
on a two-lane paved road past mas- close.
sive cattle farms that had been hacked
out of the rainforest. The smell of ACCORDING TO fish experts, piracattle dung hung heavy in the moist, nhas have a remarkably powerful bite,
humid air. The pavement soon gave especially given their relatively small
way to a rugged, potholed and often size; most are under a foot in length.
rained-out red dirt road, dotted here A recent study showed that black pira|
|
05đ2014 [[2R]]

READER’S DIGEST

nhas could exert a bite force 30 times nhas have a horrible, and ill-deserved,
their bodyweight. No other animal reputation,” Huskey told me. “Could
matches up, including the great white they be lethal? Yes. You have to reshark. Even the powerful American spect them. But they’re not the manalligator pales in comparison; a pira- eaters many think them to be.”
nha’s bite force is three times as powVeteran Amazon fishing guide Paul
erful as an alligator of similar size.
Reiss agreed, saying, “They would be
In addition to their powerful jaw more scared of you.”
muscles, the piranha’s teeth are perEnrique has nothing but respect
fectly designed for
for the tough, fighting
slicing and dicing
fish. He held up his
their prey. Their trianright index finger and
A recent
gular top teeth close
showed me a vicious
down perfectly into
one-and-a-half inch
study
the gaps of their lower
scar that encircled it.
showed that
teeth. As one writer
“The red-bellied pirablack
noted, “Powerful jaws
nha bit me hard, all the
piranhas
complete the arsenal,
way down to the bone,
could exert a
snapping quickly and
when I picked it up to
bite force 30
show it to someone,”
continuously, allowexplained the experiing piranhas to carve
times their
enced Peruvian guide.
flesh off the bone like
bodyweight.
a buzz saw.”
“What’s really amazWhile there have
ing is that I had caught
been rare reports over
that piranha 20 minthe years of piranhas attacking and utes earlier and it had been lying in
killing humans, none have been fully the bottom of my boat, out of the waauthenticated. Steve Huskey, associ- ter, all that time. Then it still had the
ate professor of biology at Western strength to nearly bite off my finger.
Kentucky University and piranha re- Piranhas never stop fighting.”
searcher and frequent visitor to the
Most of the local fisherman I talked
Amazon, says movies like Piranha to had a story of being chomped on
and Piranha Part Two: The Spawning by a piranha. One, Alipio Gomes, simshare the blame for building up the pi- ply held up the ring finger of his left
ranha’s man-eater reputation. In these hand. The tip was missing. He had
films hapless victims are chomped to been fishing and was removing the
bits by marauding schools of ravenous piranha from a hook when it lopped
piranhas.
off an inch or so of flesh and bone.
“Thanks partly to Hollywood, piraNone of this surprises the experts
| 05đ2014
[[1L]]

Enrique Sanchez holding a black piranha that he caught using raw beef as bait.

I spoke with. Huskey explained that
piranhas have had to adapt to the low
oxygen levels that result when water
levels on freshwater lakes and rivers in
the Amazon rainforest drop perilously
low each year. “As the water levels
drop, the piranhas have to compete
for food, space and oxygen. They are
tough customers.”
Indeed, it’s during this low-water
season, usually in November, when
piranhas are typically at their most
dangerous. When trapped in small
pools they can literally starve to death.
An animal, especially a wounded or
infirm one that ventures into such a
pool, can create a feeding frenzy.

BY MID-AFTERNOON, the humid,
moist air hangs heavy as the sun beats
down on us. My t-shirt is soaked with
perspiration and I’m wiping beads of
sweat off my forehead. Our latest fishing hole, near the edge of the lake and
close to a wide swath of cana brava
grass, is teeming with piranhas.
The fish are biting. Fearsome as
they look, I know they’re just suffering from a bad reputation. Everyone I talked to before my trip
here—professional sport fishermen, marine biologists, academics—all told me basically the same
thing: Don’t believe the horror stories.
|
|
05đ2014 [[2R]]

READER’S DIGEST

Looking out over the surface of the if there is any trouble. As I loop the
calm lake I recall what Amazon fishing rope around my waist, the trailer for
guide Paul Reiss had told me when I the movie Piranha comes to mind,
asked him if it was safe to swim with “When flesh-eating piranhas are acpiranhas. “Just make sure you’re not cidentally released into a summer rebleeding. Piranhas may think you are sort’s rivers, the guests become their
a wounded animal and take a bite out next meal.”
of you.” Then he joked, “I’ve only lost
But I’ve gone too far to back out
a couple of my fishing clients to pira- now. As I stand up and hand Ennhas!” At least, I think
rique the rope his eyes
he was joking.
widen and he asks me,
I ask Enrique, “What
“You’re really going to
I ask, “What
would you say if I told
do this?”
you I wanted to swim
In a flash I am over
would you
with the piranhas?”
the
side of the boat
say if I told
He is startled. He
and in the lake. The
you I wanted
tells Renato I want to
water is cool on my
to swim
go for a swim. Both of
skin, refreshing after
with the
them now look conthe heat of the sun. But
piranhas?”
as I begin kicking my
cerned. While locals
legs to tread water, Endon’t consider piranha
He is
rique tells me to stop.
man-eaters, they don’t
startled.
go out of their way to
Flailing in the warm
swim with them. “They
water, in the middle of
have a nasty bite,” says
what may be a school
Enrique, suddenly serious. “He shows of piranhas, is not a good idea, he
me his mangled index finger as a re- says. I feel something brush across my
minder.
leg. Then again.
Renato carefully removes a small piI grab the side of the boat and it
ranha from his hook and tosses it back begins to drift into the thick grass.
into the mirror-calm lake. Enrique Not good. In addition to piranha, this
asks me, “Did you notice that every is where stingrays, electric eels and
piranha we caught today had bites black caiman, South America’s alligataken out of their fins? That’s proof tor, like to hang out, waiting for their
that they love to bite each other. And next meal. Enrique shouts at Renato
maybe you.”
to quickly paddle the boat away.
I’ve brought along a 20-foot long
Although I’ve only been in the water
rope that I plan to tie around my waist for a few minutes, I feel like it’s time to
so Enrique can haul me out of the lake get back in the boat. I haul myself over
| 05đ2014
[[1L]]

Writer Robert Kiener on his
short, daring dip into Piranha
Lake. The thick grass harbored
more than fish.

the side and sit down. Enrique
seems much relieved.
“You seemed really worried,” I tell him. “Why?”
“If you had been bitten; the
piranha would have smelled
blood and gone after you.”
“Bitten?” I asked him “By
what?”
“Just before you got back
into the boat I saw a four-foot
caiman come out of the cana
brava and swim right by you.”
THAT EVENING, back in
our lodge, Enrique, Renato
and I are dining on some of
the red-bellied and black piranha we recently caught.
We are having it both grilled alone as
well as cooked in a tasty soup, a caldeirada, with plenty of locally-grown
vegetables. I prefer the soup; the fish
is softer and tastes sweeter than the
grilled dish. And there is the irony of
the meal; I am biting into the fish that
might have bitten me.
Piranha is tasty but very bony. As I
take a forkful of black piranha a small
bone gets caught in my throat and I
begin choking. After I free it Enrique
reminds me, “What did I tell you, the
piranha never stops fighting!”
|
|
05đ2014 [[2R]]